Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor. • Hacker News Board

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#51

Post by tomharrisonjr » Fri, Feb 05, 2010, 4:05 PM UTC

F_J_H wrote: post #37

tomharrisonjr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am the guy that lives at the author's house. We are saving over $100/month as a result of the reductions we have made. I agree with your general position, but there's at least a niche market out there, and growing rather fast, actually.

That is interesting. At the Smart Energy conference I spoke about, one Canadian utility that has implemented smart meters and Time of Use pricing found virtually no evidence that people were reducing their consumption. If anything, load was shifted from peak periods to the off peak periods on the weekend. You would have been a great example of what they were hoping for. I am curious though. If you are using about .09…

I had found some reasonably scientific research done a while back in a pilot program showing 15% reduction by otherwise passive people. I can't find the study now, so I could be full of it :-)

Actually, shifting to off-peak is a good outcome since fewer spinning reserve plants (usually the least efficient) are needed. But, as you say, not really the desired outcome.

My baseline use tends to run at about 300W. We first did obvious things like replace some of our lighting with CFL, and we got rid of an old chest freezer we didn't need. We changed behavior through learning to turn off lights when we left a room. There were some no-brainer things (my stereo apparently allows multi-room hookups, and if you have the buttons turned on, it uses several hundred watts to do nothing. I replaced a fileserver + routers with an Apple Time Capsule and saved 100+ watts. We use the dryer differently. And we installed a few BITS smart strips. The reason our savings are high is partly because I live in the Boston area, where our electricity rate is currently $0.19/kWh, I think. Bottom line was that we made a lot of little changes. I have written about most of them in my personal blog, called fivepercent.us if you're interested.

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#52

Post by tomharrisonjr » Fri, Feb 05, 2010, 4:10 PM UTC

gridspy wrote: post #46

jodrellblank wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems terrible to have a device in my house measuring electricity (the meter), then put a reader on it, stream the data over wifi, over the internet, to a company with a bank of servers and several full time employees then process it then stream it back over the mobile phone network, all in the interest of saving energy.

One advantage is that the storage and processing of your power usage is centralised in one place, benefiting from economies of scale. If you had that storage and processing power in the meter itself the meter would cost more and use more power - while not using the advanced functionality most of the day. Having an independent monitoring company (Gridspy or WattVision) whose sole task is to help you gain insights from…

I agree with gridspy, and would add that the WattVision solution is considerably simpler than others: fewer wires, fewer connections, fewer components than (for example) the TED 5000, which I also have.

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#53

Post by tomharrisonjr » Fri, Feb 05, 2010, 8:37 PM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #42

tomharrisonjr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the folks at WattVision would concur completely. It's kind of crazy, and the idea of Smart Meters would eliminate the light sensor and wire part of the deal. I would guess that WattVision and the others in this growing market are banking on the idea that 1) the electric utilities in the US move incredibly slowly, and 2) it's not just about electricity, and even if you got a smart meter for electricity, those…

I still wonder why the fax machine is in such use when it offers lower reliability than the internet, I wonder if it's for security reasons. The worst you'll ever got through fax is either hatemail or someone photocopying their butt and faxing you it. However, your entire system can be taken down if you're not properly protected from receiving a single malicious email. Now, back to the topic. I live in southern Ontar…

I guess my point on heat was that a thing that I think needs to be done with all of these monitors is to add other kinds of household energy uses (like nat gas, oil) to the electrical data already being captured.

Natural gas is usually delivered in units of energy called "therms", oil is delivered by the gallon (or litre), and electricity is delivered by the kWh -- all of these measures of energy can be converted into kWh so could be displayed together in a single display.